Welcome to “Girl World”

Having girls seems to require a lot more energy than having boys. I was thinking about this one night as I was blow drying my daughter’s hair straight at ten o’ clock p.m. This after making sure my eight and ten year old girls washed out the chlorine. Girls can’t have brittle green hair after all. (Things I never worried about with their brother).

It seems many things are harder in general with girls. Tessa was remarking on the way home from her first day back at school that girls who were mean in second grade are nice in 3rd grade.

“Welcome to “Girl World”, Tayler replied. She then added that being fickle should be expected of girls her own age, as of course they are dealing with puberty and mood swings.

Tessa stared at me pointedly. “You’re past puberty, right Mom?” she inquired.

“Of course honey,” I said. “I believe they call this stage peri-menopause.”

“I was wondering because you can be so nice, and then so mean and then sometimes you cry and I think my mom morphs into someone else!” she exclaimed.

“What constitutes a “mean mom” in your opinion?” I moaned. “One who gives you a
five minute warning to get out of the pool?”

“A mom that yells,” The girls shouted in unison.

“After the fifth time you’re asked to get out?” I inquired.

Obviously my daughters don’t realize the sacrifices I make for them. For instance, The shampoo that gets the chlorine out of the hair is sixteen dollars.

As I write this, they have friends over and my daughters are fighting about who gets to be the teacher. Here’s my point; boys play outside, or quietly play video games. Tessa came down the stairs to complain. Her pink T-shirt reads; “Roses are red, boys are eeeeew.”

Girls look lazily through the cupboards for a snack and exclaim there”s nothing in the house to eat. My oldest son was easy to please regarding snacks. He consumed massive amounts of goldfish crackers. It was a question we asked at his high school graduation party, “Just how many goldfish has Kyle consumed in his lifetime?”

Of course, my Mother thinks I deserve my turn dealing with girls. In fact I distinctly remember her saying when my sister and I were young; “I hope you have daughters just like you”. She would return from grocery shopping laden with fruit and we would chorus: “There’s nothing in this house to eat”.

“Have a plum, an orange, some grapes”, she’d offer.

“Cherries sound good,” we’d reply.

Exasperated, my mom would shrilly announce: “Cherries are out of season, have some peanuts.”

Another thing about girls is they have a habit of pointing out how old you’re getting. When I informed my girls that Gram had taken 8mm movies of my cheerleading dance routine in high school, and that it would be fun to convert them to DVD’s, Tayler inquired “Cool, but are they in color?”